On Gift Guides

E.B. White; convenience; (mostly) practical gifts

In January of 1940, E.B. White wrote an essay entitled “Fro-Joy.” In it, he remarked on what we as a society lost with the triumph over the automobile over horse and buggy. By making five or ten of fifteen or fifty mile treks for doctors or movies or shopping or a football game convenient, cars enabled the deterioration of rural culture, leading to consolidation of schools and, inevitably, high school boys and girls up and heading off to the cities.

Cars made people better consumers, too: “Everything in life is somewhere,” he writes, “and you get there in a car… If we are not satisfied with the merchandise we find in the general store we drive till we find something that does satisfy us.” Whether this is a good or a bad, E.B. doesn’t come outright and say, but I get the sense from the rest of the essay that he doesn’t think we’re coming out ahead.

I was thinking about this concept as I sat down to write my annual gift guide. These guides are, of course, almost cliche at this point. Starting about mid-October and running right through Christmas morning, you’re liable to find on almost any website a guide to the best this and that, things to buy, things to add to your wish list. Now don’t get me wrong, I like stuff just as much as anyone (and probably more than most) — but I can’t help but feel a little dour when I reflect on all this buying. We’d certainly be better off if we didn’t have our every whim at our fingertips, the fulfillment of our desires easily done with the click of the mouse. Everything in life is indeed somewhere — and now, we don’t even need cars to buy it. I can only imagine what E.B. would think.

So with that in mind, the CWD gift guide this year is going to be pared down. It won’t be aspirational — as it has veered in years past — but instead rooted in the idea of practicality. Enough of you stick around each week to read my thoughts, the least I can do is offer some pragmatic suggestions on things I’ve found useful.

We’ll start with things that might be nice in the kitchen. Mrs. CWD and I have been making an effort to replace our plastic utensils and food storage — maybe someone you know might also appreciate an upgrade¹. We like wooden spoons, stainless steel pasta spoons and ladles, and this enameled glass food storage set from Caraway. If you’re already deplasticized, you can’t go wrong with a nice knife or cast-iron pan. Smithey makes a gorgeous one, and now, so does YETI. You might also consider a nice stainless steel French press or glass pour-over carafe for a coffee connoisseur. For a host gift, a bottle of tremendous olive oil in lieu of wine?

If you’re looking for gifts for the outdoorsman or woman, these bison wool socks are the warmest I’ve found and have kept me toasty sitting still in a tree stand this fall. I’ve found I run cold while in the woods, so this jacket made by SITKA has been a lovely pickup. They even make a toned-down version without the hunting features if you’d like to wear it out and about².

Your adventurer might appreciate these compact monoculars, which I find are nice to keep in my center console for the times I need a closer look at wildlife while sitting in traffic. If they need a new watch and are prone to get lost, I like the Garmin Instinct Solar — but watches tend to be very personal and I’m not sure make the best gifts. It might be safer just to get them a nice notebook for them to record their routes and travel notes. Or, if you’d prefer to buy clothes, when we were in Portland, Maine, over the summer, Mrs. CWD and I picked up some merino shirts from the Pinebury³. Besides being terrifically comfortable for hiking, biking, and general outdoor use, they’re also entirely made in the USA, which is nice.

If you know someone who has a garden, a gift certificate to a seed supplier might be appreciated. I like High Mowing or Pinetree Garden. If they already are saving seeds, maybe a nice pair of shears, a hori-hori, or some gardening gloves. If this hypothetical person has a brown-thumb, perhaps you instead opt for a “spray-and-grow” mushroom kit — maybe even one that looks like a polar bear! While unorthodox, you could get them an under-the-sink compost bin, especially if they’re working reduce household waste. It doesn’t even need to be electric.

Cookbooks are lovely to receive — especially nice ones — but I’ve found most people don’t buy them for themselves⁴. If you’re gifting a radical eater, you might consider Six Seasons, Buck, Buck, Moose, The Turkey Book (or the Hog Book), Wild + Whole, Field Notes for Food Adventure, or, The Forgotten Skills of Cooking. These are all cookbooks we turn to regularly in the CWD household.

Some miscellaneous things: this Pendleton upholstered bison skull for their home office, a one-on-one butchery class, a YETI cooler large enough to use for an ice bath. How about a hundred oysters shipped to their door⁵ along with a new shucking knife? You could also gift your giftee a membership to a local land conservation trust (if you’re in Massachusetts, I’d recommend The Trustees), or make a donation in their honor to a cause they are passionate about.

And last but not least, if you’re looking for a gift for a newsletter enthusiast, here are my recommendations for Substacks — I’m sure your recipient would appreciate a gifted paid subscription and I know the authors would it as well⁶.

Whatever gifts you give, I hope you give them thoughtfully. The last thing anyone needs is more stuff for the sake of having more stuff. And, if you find yourself of the receiving end of a gift, I certainly hope you take a moment to write a thank you note — by hand⁷. Receiving one of those is often a gift in itself.

With that, I’ll leave you to your shopping. Big weekend for the Family CWD with Kiddo CWD’s birthday party⁸ kicking off a flurry of festive weeks to close out the year. Let’s just hope the goodie bags Mrs. CWD lovingly packed are a hit. Either way, we’ll see you back here next week with our usual programming.

1. Here’s a lovely guide to reducing your plastic intake from

S. Jane Kim

.

2. Speaking of keeping warm, I recently learned they make reusable handwarmers, which I might need to pick-up if I ever run out of the economy pack of HotHands I bought last month.

3. Their socks are great, too — but two sock recommendations in one gift guide feels as if it may be too pragmatic.

4. Unless you’re me.

5. Barnegat Oyster Collective is an awesome organization working to restore the New Jersey shoreline using regenerative oyster farming as a method for water quality improvement. You could also look to Island Creek, which does a similar thing in Massachusetts — or, if you live in a coastal state, find a local oyster farmer and see if they can package some up for you.

6. If you do pay for a subscription to any of these — either for yourself, or for someone else — please send me a note with some proof and I will happily comp you a paid lifetime subscription to CWD. You don’t get much more than you’re getting already, but you do get some sweet CWD swag each year — shirts, branded gloves, hats, stickers, and more. This year’s should be especially exciting as

Christian Pung

of

The Midnight Ride

is designing the art.

(And I’m serious about this — if you’re already a paid subscriber to one of my recommendations the offer stands as well.)

7. Stationary, now that I mention it, might also make a nice gift.

8. Not to be confused with actual birthday.